


Another Man's Stolen Memories

by DinosaurTheology



Series: Johnny and Dora [3]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Chinese Food, Conversations, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Food, Worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-02-19
Packaged: 2018-05-21 15:40:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6057028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinosaurTheology/pseuds/DinosaurTheology
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jakey "da Jew" Peralta doesn't fall in love while he's a part of the Ianucci army, but he does come close enough to bury another man's stolen memories of dancing with a mermaid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Man's Stolen Memories

**Author's Note:**

> Brooklyn 99 isn't mine, just love it so much. Just re-watched Charges and Specs with the sister, last night, after introducing her to the show a couple of weeks ago and had to go here. Researching all the streets and restaurants was fun :)

"Ay, I got somebody I wanya ta meet," Leo Ianucci said one day. "She's cool, molto, molto." His thick, Brooklyn-Italian accent made the last words run together, sound like he was mumbling, "motto, motto." "Real cool. Name's Julie B., friends with Bianca G., like a fuckin' kid sister to me, man, a kid sister. So you be cool to her, too, ay? She'll be cool to you, real cool."

He had not known how, or how wise it would have been, to mention that Leo looked and sounded like a Vinnie Barbarino cosplayer who'd never even briefly encountered the concept of irony. Probably just make Leo laugh and say how awesome it was to hang around with a funny as shit guy like Jakey da Jew whether he actually got the joke or not. Leo did a lot of laughing just because other guys did and was, in general, pretty okay... well, in a crazy, cut-your-throat-as-soon-as-look-at-you mobster sort of way.

This is how he ends up lying next to a curvy five feet and four inches from Flushing. They know my weakness all too well, he thinks, and banishes a notion of loving brown eyes better than blue. She is, just like Leo promised, a molto, molto cool chick. He likes her braying laugh, good-nature squawk and the auburn hair piled up to heaven in curls. It's even okay that she wears enough make-up to probably count as Lakota war-paint and is a little softer around the middle and the tops of her thighs than a dream he cannot afford to have, right now. She's like a lot of the girls he went to high school with and had mad crushes on, even reminds him of Gina in a lot of ways. That's comforting--the familiarity, not that there are two Gina Linettis running around, that would be actually horrifying--and so they're good together watching dumb action movies and cartoons on Netflix, eating pizza or goofing off in bed.

She dances okay, too, sort of a half measure off step with arms and legs flailing. He sees this at a birthday party for Bianca G., thrown by her boyfriend Freddy "the Legend of All Freakin' Legends" Maliardi. He can't help but remember another woman, though. She is more graceful than Julie even if she has not prepared in any way and is forced to improvise the intricate steerage dance from Titanic. He remembers the ruffles of a dark blue skirt whirling, flashes of legs trim and tan, how her small feet rap against the beer stained hardwood floor in sensible shoes. He remembers, with his hand on Julie's ass, how it felt on the small of another woman's back. It had felt firm, finely muscled, even though the huge, ridiculous bow he'd insisted she wear. Her hand, tiny like a doll's hand, is lost in his while they turn on the floor in a clapping circle of their friends.

It was the steerage dance, he realizes then, the actual steerage dance. Not a mockery of it like he'd originally intended. That was where Jack and Rose really started to fall in love, after all. He pushes the memory away, forces it to the back and bottom of his mind's closet. It is, after all, another man's stolen memory. He and Julie keep dancing, instead, and somehow manage to avoid spilling the drinks of men more dangerous than your average insane African warlord. They schmooze a while and stop at Lucali's in Carroll Gardens on Henry for the first decent calzone that Jake's had in weeks. It is, as Julie promised, truly amazing. The crust feels flaky and crisp in his mouth but not thin, and the ricotta filling is velvety without being runny.

Velvety, some vicious little gremlin in his mind says, just like that dress under your hand, how those legs must have been under that dress. He pushes this stolen memory away, too. The man he stole it from, after all, is a cop and might come slap the bracelets on him and haul him off to the cage. He's Jakey da Jew, after all, just another moke with easy charm and what he hopes passes for good looks in the Ianucci family army.

"Jakey, baby," Julie says. "You haven't took more than just a nibble of your calzone. What's wrong? You love calzones."

"That's not me," he says. "That's some nerd in Indiana."

She frowns. "Huh?"

"Nothing," he says. "Bad joke." He takes a big, gooey, cheesy bite to show her that he's all right. "Super yummy."

"I'm glad you think so," she says. "I love Lucali's. It's just so freakin' good. Got to be the best Italian food in Brooklyn. I swear I ought to get a food blog, I swear."

He doesn't mention that the best pizza, at least, is from Sal's Pizza or that he knows a man whose food blog and weekly pizza blast could put anything she hopes to write to shame. They belong, also, to that other man. He says, "Do you like Chinese food, too?"

She snorts. "Baby, did I have a bat mitzvah nineteen years ago or not? What do you think?"

He chuckles. "Silly question. Where...?"

"Kum Kau," she says. "On Myrtle. You gotta try it, baby. The barbecue wings are the bomb. I hear even that Biggie loved em, once at like four dozen at once."

"That," he says, "would be a worthy subject for a rap song." He taps the table, beatboxes, and begins, "Yo my name is Jake and it rhymes with cake... that's not what I'm gonna eat, gonna be chicken meat, so much chicken meat... oh God, I'm gonna barf."

She squeals in delight. "Ah, jeez... that's awful. You're awful. Jeez." She regains control. "I hear they got a really neat looking mermaid doll in their fish tank, for decoration like. I wanna see that, too."

He doesn't tell her about a man, huge but gentle, who laughs at his awful raps or that the truly best Chinese food to be had in Brooklyn is the Dan Dan noodle soup or beef lure at the Grand Sichuan on 5th in Bay Ridge. He tells her, instead, "I knew a mermaid once."

"A mermaid?" She sticks her tongue out. "Yeah, right. Some stripper with a fish costume, knowing you. You're crazy, Jakey. That's why Leo loves you, that's why I..." She sputters out, before laughing again. "A mermaid. You're crazy."

"That's me," he says. "Never know what Jakey da Jew's gonna do next, right?"

"Damn straight," she says. "'Cept for one thing." She leans in tight and closes her fingers over his. He smells the Juicy Fruit on her breath, the lavender and mimosa shampoo from the Bath and Body Works on Flatbush in her hair. "What he does pretty soon better be me."

"Message received, ma'am," he says. And he does, later. It almost helps him to forget how the mermaid had stepped on both his feet at once, somehow. Must just be, he reflects, that they're not so graceful out of the water. He wants to slide beneath the waves with her again, to slip through the ocean free as the current, to gaze into those enormous, melting, chocolate drop eyes. He can't, though, not for another four months and probably not even then. Even if he becomes that man, again, and reclaims those memories... there are some things that man just doesn't have a claim on, not now and maybe not ever.

This isn't bad, though, lying here in the dark with Julie snoring softly beside him in her velvety blue mask, Oscar the Grouch nightgown and Strawberry Shortcake sleep cap. She's fun to be around, really a great girlfriend, and even almost beautiful when she smiles. She's not a mermaid, though, and the other man can't forgive her for it. Jakey da Jew can, though, so he slips his arm around her waist, snuggles close to her lavender and mimosa curls and falls asleep. 


End file.
